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Call for abstracts: The New Disability Activism: Current Trends, Shifting Priorities and (Uncertain) Future Directions

The onslaught of neoliberalism, austerity measures and cuts, impact of climate change, protracted conflicts and ongoing refugee crisis, rise of far right and populist movements have all negatively impacted on disability and created more suffering, impairment and deaths in the global north and south. At the same time we are witnessing the watering down of many rights, legal entitlements and policies that sustained disability lives as well as the ability and willingness of academia, non-governmental organisations, multinationals and institutions to get involved in fighting back politically, economically, culturally and socially to ensure change. Yet, disabled people are fighting back and we urgently need to understand how, where and what they are doing, what they feel their challenges are and what their future needs will be.

Editors Dr. Maria Berghs (De Montfort University), Dr. Tsitsi Chatiaka (University of Zimbabwe) and Dr. Yahya El-Lahib (University of Calgary) are putting together a book proposal for Routledge illustrating disability activism in its current forms and needed future directions. We will provide a dedicated space to disability activists to give them a platform to illustrate their current practices and a platform to do this in a format of their choosing. We also want to illustrate some of the ways in which academics are engaging in activist practice to understand why and how this occurs. Lastly, we feel we need to learn from the ways in which disability activism is forming and will change or needs to change to combat the coming challenges of the 21st Century. How do you define activism? Does disability activism need to decolonise? What are the differing roles of pioneer and emerging activists in the north and south? What kinds of issues are of concern?

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

-The links between models and theories to social changes as seen and understood by activists and academics: what works?

-The effects of neoliberal austerity measures and role of disabled people’s activism in the global north and south and links to influencing international and national policy

-Involvement in accessibility, independence and inclusion movements in Indonesia, intersectionality to protests against university fees in South Africa or movements such as Black Lives Matter in the United States

-Far right movements, fascism and living under (dis) ableist dictatorships